This invention relates to an infant garment wearable by an infant with safety features that can be used to restrain movements of the infant or used as a lifting device.
As the infants grow, they develop a set of functional skills or age-specific tasks. Crawling and walking are some of the developmental milestones that most children accomplished between the ages of seven and twelve months. When crawling or walking, the infants often fall and may incur serious injuries hitting themselves on the corners of hard objects, such as furniture, kitchen cabinetry, etc. Therefore, the parents and caregivers are strongly encouraged to watch the child as he becomes more mobile. In case of an emergency, the caregiver can lift the child and move him to a more safe area.
However, in an emergency situation, when every second counts, it is not always expeditious or practical to lift the child by grasping him under the arms in a conventional manner. Often time, the emergency personnel are forced to hold one object with one hand and lift the infant with another. A baby can weigh more than twenty pounds by the age of 12 months. Therefore, simply pulling the child by his arm may dislocate the child's shoulder and cause serious damage.
The industry has developed different harnesses that are secured on the child's body over the child's clothing. Some such harnesses are designed as safety tethers that lets the caregiver keep the child close by when walking. Such devices are usually strapped around the child's torso; the harnesses are provided with a tether that the parent holds in her hand as the child is trying to walk. Another known device is a walking assistant that can be used when the child is just learning to walk. It is formed as a vest that fastens around baby's chest and has upwardly extending straps so that parents can hold the straps while the baby tries to walk. The parents can remain in an upright position since the straps are long enough to extend to about the parent's waist.
While these devices may be beneficial under certain conditions, none of them allows the parent or emergency personnel to quickly lift the infant such that the harness does not present any danger to the baby's breathing. The present invention contemplates elimination of drawbacks associated with convention child harnesses and provision of a child-wearable garment with integrated harness that distributes the lifting load around the child's torso in a safe and effective manner.